Chapter 2: The First Prophecy

Liam woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and the sound of Clara humming in the kitchen below. For a blissful moment, he'd forgotten about the basement, the casket, and the impossible vision that had shattered his sleep. But as consciousness fully returned, so did the memory—vivid and unsettling.

The stranger's face lingered in his mind with crystalline clarity: silver hair combed neatly back, laugh lines around closed eyes, hands folded peacefully over a charcoal suit. Every detail remained sharp while the rational explanations felt increasingly flimsy.

"Morning, sleepyhead." Clara appeared in the doorway with a steaming mug of coffee, her hair still damp from the shower. "You were tossing and turning all night. Bad dreams?"

Liam accepted the coffee gratefully, using the moment to compose himself. "Just adjusting to the new house, I think. All those unfamiliar sounds."

She perched on the edge of the bed, studying his face with the concern that made him fall in love with her in the first place. "You look terrible. Maybe you should call in sick today."

"No, I'm fine. Really." He forced a smile. "First day back at the university after the move—I can't miss that."

But he wasn't fine. Throughout his morning routine, fragments of the vision intruded. The peaceful expression on the stranger's face. The expensive fabric of his suit. The way his skin had looked so lifelike, warm even.

Hallucination, he told himself firmly while shaving. Stress-induced visual disturbance. Perfectly normal given the circumstances.

The face in the mirror looked unconvinced.

At Riverside University, Liam's office felt like a sanctuary of normalcy. Stacks of historical documents, research books, and his computer humming with the familiar rhythm of academic life. He threw himself into work with desperate enthusiasm, analyzing property records from the 1800s for his current research project.

But concentration proved elusive. Every few minutes, his mind would drift back to the basement, to that impossible moment when the casket had revealed its secret. He found himself sketching the stranger's face in the margins of his notes—the kind eyes, the silver hair, the serene expression.

Around noon, he gave up on productivity and opened his laptop's browser. Almost without conscious thought, he navigated to the local newspaper's website. The Riverside Herald's obituary section loaded slowly, and Liam told himself he was being ridiculous. What did he expect to find?

He scrolled through the notices—elderly residents who'd lived full lives, a teenager lost in a car accident, a middle-aged woman who'd battled cancer. Nothing matched his vision. Of course nothing matched. Because it had been a hallucination, a product of stress and an overactive imagination.

Then he saw it.

ROBERT JAMES MORRISON, 52 Beloved husband, father, and grandfather passed away peacefully in his sleep on March 15th at Riverside General Hospital. Robert was a respected accountant at Morrison & Associates and an active member of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church...

The photograph accompanying the obituary made Liam's coffee mug slip from nerveless fingers. It shattered against his office floor, sending ceramic shards and hot liquid across the worn carpet.

The same face. Exactly the same face.

Silver hair combed back in the same style. The same kind eyes, though these were open and smiling. Even the suit looked similar—dark, expensive, professional. Robert James Morrison, who had died yesterday while Liam was moving into his new house.

Who had been lying in the casket hours before the obituary was published.

Liam's hands shook as he grabbed paper towels to clean up the spilled coffee. His rational mind scrambled for explanations. Coincidence—he must have seen Morrison's photo somewhere before, in an advertisement or a church newsletter. His subconscious had simply recycled a familiar face for his hallucination.

But deep down, in a place that existed beyond logic and reason, he knew that wasn't true.

He read the obituary three more times, memorizing every detail. Robert Morrison had been an accountant, a churchgoer, a family man. He'd died peacefully at the hospital after a brief illness. There was nothing remarkable about his death, nothing that would explain why his peaceful face had appeared in a moldering casket in Liam's basement.

The rest of the workday passed in a fog. Liam mechanically responded to emails and attended a faculty meeting, but his thoughts remained fixed on the impossible connection between his vision and Morrison's death. When five o'clock finally arrived, he practically ran to his car.

The drive home felt endless. Every red light stretched into eternity, every slow driver became an obstacle to answers he desperately needed. By the time he pulled into his driveway, his knuckles were white against the steering wheel.

Clara greeted him at the door with a kiss and the smell of dinner cooking. "How was your first day back? You look a little frazzled."

"It was... interesting." He managed another forced smile. "I'm going to check on something in the basement real quick."

Her expression shifted slightly. "The basement? Why?"

"Just want to make sure Dad's gift is settling in okay." The lie came easier than it should have. "You know how old wood can warp in new environments."

Clara's fear of basements was well-documented, stemming from a childhood incident she rarely discussed. She wouldn't follow him down there, which was exactly what he needed right now.

"Don't be long," she called as he headed for the basement door. "Dinner's almost ready."

The basement felt different than it had the night before—charged with an energy that made the hair on his arms stand up. The casket waited in its corner like a patient predator, unchanged but somehow more present.

Liam approached slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. The rational part of his mind insisted this was madness, that he was chasing shadows and coincidences. But his feet carried him forward anyway, drawn by a curiosity that felt almost magnetic.

The lid opened with the same protesting creak.

Empty. Just stained satin and the musty smell of age.

Liam stared into the vacant interior for a long moment, part of him relieved and part disappointed. What had he expected? Another impossible vision? Proof that he wasn't losing his mind?

He was about to close the lid when movement caught his eye. The satin lining seemed to shimmer, like heat waves rising from summer pavement. Then, as if materializing from nothing, a figure began to take shape.

This time it was a woman, elderly and dignified, wearing a blue dress with pearl buttons. Her gray hair was styled in soft waves, and her hands were folded over a small purse. Like Morrison, she looked peaceful—as if she'd simply closed her eyes for a nap.

Liam stumbled backward, his vision blurring. This wasn't possible. Hallucinations didn't repeat with such vivid consistency. They didn't show him strangers in such perfect detail.

"Liam?" Clara's voice drifted from upstairs. "Dinner!"

He blinked hard, and when he looked again, the casket was empty.

"Coming!" he called back, his voice cracking slightly.

But he didn't move. Not yet. Instead, he pulled out his phone and opened the Herald's website again, navigating to the obituaries with fingers that trembled against the screen.

No new deaths. Not yet.

But if his vision was real—if the casket somehow showed him people who were about to die—then somewhere in Riverside, an elderly woman in a blue dress was living her final hours.

The thought should have terrified him. Instead, as he climbed the basement stairs and closed the door behind him, Liam felt something else entirely.

Power.

For the first time in his life, he possessed knowledge that no one else had. He'd seen beyond the veil that separated life from death, glimpsed secrets that were meant to remain hidden. The historian in him recognized the intoxicating pull of forbidden knowledge, the same drive that had led archaeologists into cursed tombs and researchers into dangerous archives.

"There you are," Clara said as he entered the kitchen. "Everything okay down there?"

"Perfect," Liam replied, and for the first time all day, he wasn't lying.

As they sat down to dinner, he found himself studying Clara's face—memorizing the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the gentle curve of her neck, the animated way she gestured while telling him about her day at school. Beautiful, vital, alive.

The casket had shown him death twice now, but both visions had been of strangers. What would happen if he ever saw a familiar face in that stained satin lining? What would happen if he saw Clara?

The thought made his appetite vanish, but he forced himself to eat and nod at appropriate moments while she talked. All the while, part of his mind was already planning his return to the basement. He needed to understand what he'd inherited. He needed to know how far this impossible gift extended.

He needed to open that casket again.